The most helpful favourable review

The most helpful critical review

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 starsNot only THE economics text...
This book provided the foundation for most economic policy (in the west at least) through the middle of the 20th century, and as such must be considered among the most important books ever published. It will show the reader why certain decisions were taken, and how we got to where we are. Even if you don't agree with Keynes' theories this is an indispensable guide for...

1.0 out of 5 starsAvoid the BN Publishing Version
This seemed like a great book. But unfortunately it was nearly impossible to understand the few mathematical formulae as they were formatted terribly. Do BN Publishing not know what a subscript or a greek Sigma are? After a while I finally realised that the "S"s were probably meant to be capital Sigma - meaning SUM - rather than S and half these other letters probably...

This seemed like a great book. But unfortunately it was nearly impossible to understand the few mathematical formulae as they were formatted terribly. Do BN Publishing not know what a subscript or a greek Sigma are? After a while I finally realised that the "S"s were probably meant to be capital Sigma - meaning SUM - rather than S and half these other letters probably subscripts. Really the maths in this version is impossible to understand - especially if you have a background in Maths.

Really they were nearly unintelligible for the most part. And the large format page sizes and low quality cover added to the disappointment. I regret being such a cheapskate - I should have paid a little more for a better quality print / formatted version.

This is an absolutely awful reprint. Comparing this with the Macmillan edition, one can see that: the formulae are in many places completely misrepresented, unaccountably truncated, or plain nonsensical; and the text contains a number of punctuation errors (commas become full stops, for instance) and in some cases is excised for no reason, rendering the argument incomplete.

Avoid at all costs. Fork out for an older edition (such as Macmillan), as their reprint is currently unavailable. My hypothesis is that a previous edition was simply scanned using text-recognition software and then terribly under-edited. Why did BN Publishing bother in the first place?

This is a review not of what Keynes wrote but of the BN publishing reprint edition.

I appreciate that reprint publishers try to keep costs down but that is no excuse for cutting corners. Dover Publications sets the standard here and other publishers who can't perform to that standard are, sadly, becoming more common and ever more slapdash in their efforts.

Defects in this BN publishing edition include swathes of typographical errors, grammatical errors and malapropisms. Worse, and especially in the General Theory, where Keynes sought to minimise the use of mathematics in his exposition, what few formulae there are have obviously been typeset by someone who simply hasn't a clue what printed mathematics should look like. It leaves the impression of having re-typed from copy using an ordinary word processor by a none-too-literate typist.

If you want a better edition of the General Theory, you might do better to fork out a little more and get the edition in the Great Minds series. IMO this BN edition is fit only to be shredded and used for horse bedding - and even then with a profuse apology to the unfortunate creature who will be expected to repose upon it.

I was disappointed in the "BN publishing" edition (the one with a picture of a handshake on the front cover). It is not a direct reprint of the original 1936 (Macmillan) edition. The page numbers have been changed, the index has disappeared completely, the mathematical formulas are wrongly set up, and the table on page 69 (of this edition) has a nasty page break in the middle.

It is to be hoped that the rival Palgrave edition (which I have not seen) shows more respect to Keynes' masterpiece.

This book provided the foundation for most economic policy (in the west at least) through the middle of the 20th century, and as such must be considered among the most important books ever published. It will show the reader why certain decisions were taken, and how we got to where we are. Even if you don't agree with Keynes' theories this is an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to understand government economic policy.

Beyond his importance as an economist however, Keynes was a member of the Bloomsbury group of artists and Bohemians, and that is reflected in his writing. This is no novel, but there are few better written economic texts.

When Einstein overthrew classical Newtonian physics with his theories of relativity, Newtonian physics continued to be the dominant theory because of its utility. It was a close enough approximation to work in all but a few special cases.

When Keynes overthrew classical economics in this book it was because classical economics did not work. Clasical economics was a theoretical special case which was demonstrated not to have utility in the real world.

As Keynes says: "The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight ...".

Written during the last depression, this book was originally intended for an audience of fellow economists. He considered the then classical economics to be a special case and not a very realistic one. This is one of the books of which everyone has heard but fewer have read. For students of economics it is a book that should be read. For non-economists, it might be a bit of a struggle. It was certainly a struggle for me.

Every Economics student has heard of John Maynard Keynes and his famous book.I only bought this as it was a required text for my History of Economic Theory class, and boy did it help me! It is not the most entertaining of reads, but I made Revision notes from it for my exam and I got a First! Using quotes and original diagrams from the book itself in my exam must really have made a great impression on the examiner when marking my paper. The book will really aid your understanding and provide background of the subject matter covered in your lectures. Now this great work sits proudly on my bookshelf reminding me of my success.

A difficult, poorly written, hugely important masterpiece. Probably the most important book on Economics in history. Too many Economics students are conditioned about Keynesian ideas based on Americanised interpretations of his work which try and absorb his revolutionary thinking by claiming it concerns merely a short term solution to a passing problem of the 1930's. In reality it undermined the thinking of the entire neo-liberal consensus but Keynes didn't live long enough to battle it out with those who like things as they are with high unemployment being the price of low inflation and big profits.

"We are all Keynesians now". Too true. The best thing about K was not being a socialist (he was not much to the chagrin and misrepresentation of the American right) but that he demonstrated it was possible to have an economist and a heart share the same body. He was a thinking man, prepared to alter his stance "when the facts change". In this book K traces his journey from the "right" path to the "dark" side. The book's core message is that a modern economy is built on demand and if that collapses, depression ensues except the government intervenes. K agrees with the classical school that the economy would adjust in time. His disagreement is the time frame. In the long-run the economy will adjust but as K famously said "in the long run we are all dead".

I read a blog somewhere that the long-run is a technical term and could be very rapid and surely K knew that. Uh-huh. I lived in an underdeveloped country where demand collapsed and the adjustment went on for two decades. In the 1930s US depression only WWII and the subsequent reconstruction a decade plus later brought final adjustment. Here in Europe we know social unrest is not restricted to the Middle East and North Africa. When demand collapses you bet we'll all be Keynesians.

As to criticisms that the book is difficult to read, remember it was written for economists trained in classical dogma.